Grading on a Curveball

Back when I taught Composition and Rhetoric at WVU, I thought 44 papers was a lot to grade every four weeks. Oh how I moaned and complained about those freshman monstrosities. How totally unfair it was for me to have to grade these papers while teaching TWO whole classes.

Then I started student teaching in a public high school, and I realize just what a slackass I truly was.

With 150 students, my grading time has nearly quadrupled. Granted, high school students don't write nearly as many four-page papers, but what they lack in page length they more than make up for in sheer volume. I did have to grade research papers last month that were each five pages in length, and that took some SERIOUS time. Right now, I have 150 study guides, 150 sets of homework questions, and 150 essay tests to grade. This doesn't even include the 150 writing journals that I should be checking every two weeks.

There are, I've learned, some tricks to reduce grading. First, I can always assign a more creative project that's a bit more enjoyable to read than the traditional prompt. For instance, I also have a stack of storybook projects to grade, wherein each student chose one story from The Odyssey to recreate as a children's storybook. Thus far, quite a few of these projects are really impressive and fun to read. In one story, Odysseus's crew consists of gingerbread men (because the Cyclops in the story eats Odysseus's men) and they put the Cyclops to sleep with "the finest warm milk in all of gingerbread-town" (instead of getting him drunk on ye olde wine). Stuff like that is a treat to grade and really leads me to believe that younger generations show legitimate creativity and intelligence.

Second, and less nobly, I can "grade for completion." The student gets full credit if he or she simply finished the assignment... no matter how much of a steaming pile the product may be in terms of quality. I may pull this stunt on the pile of homework questions.

Finally, I can always find refuge in bureaucracy by grading according to the PSSA Scoring Guide for Writing Assessment. Under these guidelines, I assign a paper a raw score based solely on five areas: Focus, Content, Organization, Style, and Conventions. Now, my mentor teacher uses these five fields anyway, but she tends to comment on the papers as well. But if I'm looking to cut corners in an efficient way, a simple and completely worthless number at the top of the paper is the way to go.

It's hard not to get completely overwhelmed by grading when the stacks of papers lay on your desk. Despair creeps in. Resentment begins to rear its ugly head. Before too long, one can begin to harbor disturbing fantasies of lighting the papers on fire and dancing nude in the ashes. I've refrained from drinking while grading, despite how stress-relieving that sounds. I don't need to wake up the next day to find that I've scrawled "YouR paper iz reely pretty! The adjectivs make U look soo hottt!!"

I'm almost ashamed to admit this, but I'm a lot more forgiving of errors near the end of a stack of papers because I get tired of writing the same comments over and over again. I sit there and think, "Damn! I don't want to explain why his paragraph structure isn't right. Fuck it!" This is not the attitude of the world's greatest teacher, but these are certainly the thoughts of an overworked human being with five classes of honors students whose helicopter parents would leap on me if I knocked their grades down unfairly.

English teachers catch a lot of shit because their grading is subjective. Well, generally speaking, it's good that it is. Would you really want your paper, creative and thoughtful that it is, graded according to rigid and unwavering criteria? That's why the state standardized tests are so roundly criticized. Subjective grading allows teachers to use their experience and judgment to assess style, substance, creativity, and individual student improvement until Skynet develops sentience and can create cyborgs to do this. On the downside, subjective grading does leave the student's paper at the mercy of human frailty and weakness. I try my damnedest not to take my frustrations and exhaustion out on my students' work, but dammit, it's hard sometimes.

Maybe I could just beat them instead. That could be cathartic.

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"What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

All Downhill From Here, Part 2

Previously, on THE UNDESIRABLE ELEMENT:

"I decided to challenge my longstanding losing streak against gravity and outdoor sports by going skiing at Seven Springs."
"I failed."
"All is not well."
"flying out of control"
"crashing into bystanders"
"totally humiliated"
"heckling and demeaning comments"
"Everything clicks!"
"I've got the requisite basics to at least make it down the easiest long hill."

AND NOW THE CONCLUSION...

So I await my lady companion's return from her most recent trek up the mountain with great anticipation. I'm convinced that I'm going to conquer this mountain with style and panache, and confidence radiates from my being. Then I see my lady friend come down the slope, and she starts limping toward the lodge.... limping toward the lodge. What the hell is this?

I haul my ski-strapped ass over to her. She's quite the avid snowboarder, so if she's injured, that doesn't portend good things for my future. Apparently, while up on the slopes, she saw what was clearly a novice snowboarder ahead of her, and she tried to pass him. Unfortunately, just as she was beside him, the newbie suddenly lost control and veered sharply to the left, colliding with her and sending her crashing backwards to the ground. The newbie was uninjured, but my snowboarding friend was left with quite the bruised hip.

I sit with her in the lodge for a few minutes while she recovers, and I tell her that we could just leave now if she wants. It's getting late anyway, and the resort is closing in an hour (10:30pm) or so we think. "Oh no!" she says. "You're not leaving until you go down that mountain. Come on, we're going up."

Now I'm not the world's most masculine guy, but if a woman is willing to drag herself up the mountain in considerable pain just to take me down once (that's totally NOT a euphemism), man-honor demands that I follow. So she shrugs off her pain, and we head back over toward the ski lift.

Of all the challenges associated with the ski trip, this lift was the one I feared the most. I've always had something of a problem with heights (to say the least), and perching myself precariously on a swinging park bench as a cable drags me up a mountain while I'm 30 feet above the ground struck me as a potentially nerve-wracking experience. But with my pale imitation of male machismo firmly in place, I pretend not to be bothered by it, and we make our way to the lift. At first, the experience was rather pleasant. This isn't so bad, I muse to myself. It's just like a weird roller coaster. But then we get higher..... and higher..... higher. And then the air gets colder... and colder... and colder. I wrap my arm tightly around the back of the ski lift bench and grip the side bar like I'm Luke Skywalker clutching the bottom of Cloud City.

"Not as easy as you were expecting?" my lady friend asks.
"I can't believe I was thinking about skydiving." I reply dejectedly.

Despite my childish caterwauling, we make it to the top of the ski lift, and I'm suddenly feeling very pumped about successfully using the ski lift without crying like a baby or falling to my doom. "Let's do this!" says I.

We start our sojourn down the mountain, and for the first ten seconds, everything seems to be going well. I'm zipping along at a controlled clip, feeling confident in my ability to successfully navigate my way down the precipice when suddenly....

CRASH!!!! I face-plant hard into the snow. My skis come flying off (as they're supposed to), and after wiping the snow and ice off of my face, I work to put them back on. "No worries," I say to my friend. "I just got discombobulated for a moment." - Yeah, that word will totally make me sound cool.

I pick myself back up and start moving again, but this time there's trouble. I start careening out of control in a very scary way, and I hear my lady friend call from behind me: "JP!! Watch out!! You're going the wrong way!!" Holy shit!! The last thing I need is to end up on some sort of slope of doom, so I do the only intelligent thing and deliberately throw myself into the snow. Again, my skis pop off, and lady friend catches up to me. "You were about to go down the black diamond path (the hardest one)." She points to a path off to my left. "That's the one we want to do."

We successfully make it to the proper track, and I ski about twenty yards when, once again.... CRAASSSHHH!! This time, I land directly on both of my knees. This hit doesn't look particularly bad; however, all of the force goes straight into my knees, and the pain radiates through them in a thoroughly unpleasant way. My faithful lady friend stops whenever I crash and waits for me to re-orient myself.

"What's the problem!?" she yells.
"My knees feel like they got smashed by a sledgehammer!" I call back.
"What??? You crashed into the log jammer??"
"Never mind. I'm coming!"

I get back up once more. But before I get moving, I hear the distinct sound of WHOOSHING behind me. I turn around to see a whole cavalcade of skiers barreling towards me. Oh shit! I think to myself. I'm about to re-enact the wildebeast sequence from The Lion King. Fortunately, this graceful stampede consists of experienced skiers and they breeze right by me, but the stream of skiers never stops. The slope is now inundated with people.

I start moving again, and my downhill velocity begins to increase dramatically. I've never felt so completely out of control as a result of my own incompetence. The instructor told me to turn my skis into a letter A to slow down, and I do so repeatedly. "LETTER A!! LETTER A!!" I say to no one in particular. But the advice does no good at these speeds, and I keep going. The "Letter A" business continues for a few yards before I look down and see that I've managed to get my skis crossed. They're in the letter "A" position alright, but I can't get them straight again. A few foreboding seconds pass where I know I'm in trouble, and I can't do anything about it. I literally say, "Oh shit," before falling face-forward down the slope. Now this is a fall of epic proportions. Since I have no balance whatsoever as a result of my crossed skis, I proceed to tumble down the slope over and over and over again. My poles and skis go flying in four different directions. I finally come to stop, staring at the night sky. Lady friend sees all of this and makes her way over to me.

"Oh my god!!! JP, are you okay!!??" She told me later that she thought I'd really hurt myself badly that time. In reality, the knee drop hurt far worse than this spill. As comically ridiculous as my endless tumble must have looked, it really didn't hurt at all.
"Nothing bruised except my ego," I moan.
"Can you keep going?" she asks.
I gesture to the slope - the only way back down the mountain. "I don't really have much of a choice." I say.
"Do you want me to go in front of you or behind you?" she asks.
"Why don't you just head on down the rest of the way," I suggest. "I'll probably fall at least six more times, and there's no sense in you stopping each time."

She agrees and glides effortlessly down the slope. I stagger to my feet, but now my hands and knees are shaking. Not only do my knees still ache from that previous fall, but my nerves are completely shot now. I know full well that another wipeout is imminent, but I don't know when it will come.

The slope has now become a full-fledged ski-way, with skiers whizzing by me at every moment. I hear their whooshing and swishing, but I can't see them as I concentrate on what I'm doing. CRAAASSHHH!!!! Down I go again, but I pick myself up once more and continue. "WATCH OUT!!" I hear a stranger say to someone to my left, but his cry of alarm breaks my concentration and I face-plant again. CRAAASSSHHH!!! It turns out that the resort, in fact, closes at 10pm, so everyone still around has come up the mountain to get one last trip in... right as I'm going for the first time ever.

At this point, I realize that my own confidence is to blame. In a wondrous moment of self-reflection, I recognize that my own nerves are causing me to fuck up the whole process. I briefly consider just sitting on the slope and gliding down the mountain on my ass, but I figure that nothing would be more humiliating. So I say to myself:

"Self, you are not going to give this shit up. You've already been mocked, humiliated, bruised, battered, and emasculated. The least you can do is hold your fat head high as you tumble down the rest of the mountain. You may not look graceful or impressive, but dammit, you'll win the day on your own steam."

So that's exactly what I do. By the time I make it back to the lodge, I've fallen at least a dozen times, and I'm covered head-to-toe in snow and sweat. Every joint in my body aches, and my ego has been shattered. I see my lady friend resting comfortably on the bench outside the lodge.

"Hey! You made it!" she cheers genuinely.
"I must be the most uncoordinated man to ever fall down this mountain," I mumble dejectedly.
"At least you never gave up," she says. "And you're not as full of yourself as most of the other guys here who think they're God's gift to the mountain."
I think immediately of the asshole frat boys in the sauna with their waxed chests and derogatory jeers and heckles. Fuckin eh! I'm totally better than them!

We go to return my equipment, and every muscle in my doughy body aches and creaks. As we hobble back to the car, I say, "You may not believe this, but I think I want to try this again."
"Oh thank God!!" she says, breathing a sigh of relief. "After watching you today, I thought you'd never want to come again. I figured this turned you off of skiing for life."
"Nah!" says me, waving my hand dismissively. "As badly as I did on the mountain, that was still leaps and bounds ahead of where I was when we got here."

The way I see it, I'm not taking all of this punishment for nothing. I'm going to learn how to do this thing and zip down the mountain in a manly fashion. Six-year-olds can do it! Hell, I even learned that former Mrs. Employer, a sixty-five year old rotund woman, can ski. If they can do it, so can I. I'm going to master that mountain like the Agro-Crag.

In fact, I'm going again this Sunday, so we'll find out if I get any better or if greater hilarity and misfortune will ensue.

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"Skiing is the only sport where you spend an arm and a leg to break an arm and a leg."

All Downhill From Here, Part 1

Last weekend (because my blog updates are so very prompt), I decided to challenge my longstanding losing streak against gravity and outdoor sports by going skiing at Seven Springs. When the girl I went with suggested the idea, you only need to read as far as the word "girl" to understand why I agreed to go. But alternatively, skiing did seem like a lot of fun, and looked challenging but not impossible to do. Additionally, I've never done ANYTHING even remotely cool with my life, so I thought this would be an easy way to get the adrenaline pumping by some other means besides watching my career opportunities careen wildly off the precipice of failure.

I have two goals as we're riding up to the ski resort:
1. Do not embarrass yourself in a spectacular fashion.
2. Don't become overwhelmed with paralyzing fear on the ski lift.

I failed on both counts.

But let's return to the beginning, shall we? My lady friend works for a very, shall we say, well-to-do engineering company, and they buy discounted stuff from Seven Springs all the time. Through Machiavellian strategies I have no way of comprehending, I was able to get a free skiing lesson and a discounted evening pass for the ski lift and equipment. So at this stage of the game, I'm really excited to get my ski on. I figure it will kind of like staying on a balance board - just stay standing and let gravity do the rest. Of course, I was being willfully ignorant of my past experiences with balance boards, and I underestimated the more complicated maneuvers required of the downhill skier.

My first clue should have been the skiing boots, which are designed to snap into the skis and provide some traction should your skis pop off as you tumble down the mountain (SPOILER ALERT: I become intimately familiar with this feature later in the story). Unfortunately, these boots weren't made for walkin' on a normal surface, so I start traipsing around the lodge looking like I'm wearing those old Moon Shoes. I can't even walk up the stairs without looking like a gag reel from the first Home Alone movie. Nevertheless, I assume that I simply need to get out on the powder and then all will be well.

Then I get out on on the powder... all is not well.

On the way up to the resort, I joked with my lady friend that the skiing lesson would probably consist of me and a bunch of five-year-olds. We laughed, but I didn't think it would actually be true. To be fair, it was me, some old dude, and about a dozen 12-year olds, and I don't impress even when I take my first steps out onto the snow. Now, I have size 15 feet, so I'm used to walking while taking such length into account; however, 6-foot skis are a lot more challenging to maneuver than I would have thought. I can barely move forward to take my place next to the impatient 7th graders. Lady friend chuckles at my misfortune and heads off to her own advanced snowboarding lesson (also free). I send her a withering glare as she's walking away, but she fortunately doesn't see it. Meanwhile, my ski instructor, a woman in her mid-sixties, prepares us for our lesson.

Parallel skis make you go forward. Making the letter "A" with your skis (i.e. pointing the tips together) makes you stop. This sounds straightfoward enough, but on my first try, I careen out of control and nosedive into the snow. Laughter abounds from all the 7th graders who got it with no problem. Memories of middle school gym class flash before my eyes. The lesson continues in this manner, but the ski instructor does a great job with me. She gives me the personal attention I need... much like the slow kid in a public school class. By the end of the lesson, I've actually improved considerably. I still can't maneuver worth a damn, but I can get down the hill without flying out of control or crashing into bystanders.

My big problem, however, is that I can't get the hang of turning on skis. I learn from the ski instructor that is the most pivotal (pun intended) skill of skiing. Turning controls your speed and prevents you from careening off the mountaintop in an alarming fashion. As I have no desire to pull a Sonny Bono, I stay on the bunny hill until I can figure out how to turn adequately. Never mind the fact that I'm totally humiliated by this point. It doesn't help that I'm dressed in the most ludicrous manner possible, with my old winter coat (which is now two sizes too big for me), a pair of my brother's windbreaker pants over sweatpants (both of which are two sizes too big for me), and a big fluffy hat. For all intents and purposes, I'm so poofy that I look exactly like I did when I weighed over 300 pounds. This does not bring back good memories, and I don't look very suave on the slopes.

Regardless of my fashion faux pas, I spend the next two hours on the bunny slope. For the life of me, I can't figure out the turning thing. Six-year-olds are whizzing by me, and I'm feeling like such a chump. To make matters even worse, three frat boys from the ski lodge (which overlooks the bunny slope) appear from the sauna balcony and proceed to heckle me: "Hey! Look at the big guy on the bunny slope! Hey big guy!! You can really move! Wooo!!!" I look up at them. This doesn't help. "Hey! He's looking up here!! Why don't you man up and go on the mountain! Booo!!! BOOOOOO!!!!" My face... it burns like a thousand exploding suns, but I can't do it yet. Much as I despise their heckling and demeaning comments, I can't adequately turn my ass to go where I want to go. I begin to lose all hope.

But then suddenly.... everything clicks. It's like a lightbulb just flicked on in my brain. "Ohhh! The weight needs to shift onto the foot in the direction you turn, but you also need to lean weight onto the opposite ski but in a very particular way." It was tricky, but once I got the feel for it, I was zipping around the bunny slope in no time.

With my new-found confidence tucked under my hat, I headed for the ski lift to meet up with my lady friend, who had long since gone up the mountain at my request (both because I wanted her to enjoy herself and because I didn't want her to see me humiliate myself in front of the entire resort). I'm convinced that even if I don't look pretty coming down the mountain, I've got the requisite basics to at least make it down the easiest long hill.

Oh, hubris, thy name is JP.

CONTINUED IN PART 2.

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"It feels like I'm wearing nothing at all... nothing at all... nothing at all!"

What Was This Blog About Again?

JP has been otherwise engaged in other activities that have prevented him from updating this blog; however, I have many new ideas for posts including a recent ski trip, some fun in the classroom, and several personality malfunctions that lend themselves to mockery.

Pleas of "For the love of humanity, please stop writing!" will be summarily ignored.

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"The plural form of 'coccyx' is 'coccyges.' "